


Death is not a bad card

by Lordpardonthelesbians



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Adopted Children, Angst, F/F, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Nicole Haught Needs A Hug, Non-Graphic Violence, Parents Waverly Earp and Nicole Haught, Rachel Earp-Haught has been through alot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:27:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26499367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lordpardonthelesbians/pseuds/Lordpardonthelesbians
Summary: The eighteen months three weeks and four days seen through the eyes of Wayhaught's daughter. Inspired by the song "Sorrow" by Sleeping At Last
Relationships: Waverly Earp/Nicole Haught
Comments: 3
Kudos: 38





	Death is not a bad card

**Author's Note:**

> This is my very first Wayhaught fic please let me know if anything needs to be modified.  
> I hope you'll like it.

_**Death isn’t a bad card.** _

There should never be a point in life where death seems like the best possible outcome. Not for yourself, not for your loved ones, not even for your enemies. Death is like a hurricane. Stormy, dark and clouded. It instills fear in the heart of the poor innocent people before it comes, and when it has taken everything the soil has to give, when it has destroyed the very core of anyone that happens to be standing in its path, it leaves a sense of despair and loneliness. A void just begging to be filled again with what stood there before the storm.

Death doesn’t ask. It takes. And it takes until there is nothing left to be taken. Death leaves its friends to keep those left behind company. Five friends, five curses, five stages that anyone who has ever lost someone has to go through. They look different on everyone; they don’t always come in the same order but it’s always the same five. I have lost so many people that I know how it happens.

Denial is painful to watch. At least it was painful for me to watch my father, the best man I have ever known, spend over an hour giving my brother CPR, trying to bring him back to life. The air around us was foggy, everything was confusing. I didn’t quite understand why my dad was pushing so hard and for so long on Alex’s chest, why he was trying so hard to wake him when we all knew how much he loved his sleep. When we got home from the hospital two days later and Alex wasn’t with us, everything changed. Dad drank a lot and when he was drunk, he would hold me in his arms, thank me for coming back and beg me to never leave again. My dad never stopped drinking, he never stopped believing that Alex came home every night. He drank himself into a coma, spent his last conscious moments telling me how much he’d missed me. He hugged me and died with a smile on his face. His pain was no more for he was with Alex now. He would be okay. I knew then that he would be. Because somehow, dying solved all his problems.

_**Death isn’t a bad card.** _

If you’re like my mother, the woman who gave birth to me, your anger will be violent, loud and exhausting. Like trying to survive when you’re in a burning building. Except, the fire isn’t burning around you. It is inside you. All consuming, dark and scalding hot. You will need an outlet, something to help expel the fire inside you. You might decide that the best way to let your anger out is to let someone else feel the fire inside you. For her it was me. I was her outlet, the child she had never wanted. The one she wishes would have died instead. Hurting me helped her extinguish the fire inside her. She would beg God to either bring them both back or to take her too. She was bargaining with him. It was either all three of them or none of them. I guess it worked because after a couple of years, the anger died, and the fire took her with it. I found her hanged from the ceiling fan with just a little bit of ash on the kitchen table. There was no more fire, no more anger and no more pain.

_**Death isn’t a bad card.** _

When I came to live with my moms, I hoped I would never find out what the other two stages looked like. I had a new home with a new family. For the first time ever, I had an auntie and a bunch of uncles. Both of my moms loved me to pieces, and they said so all the time. I had everything that I ever wanted. For once, my life was perfect.

When I turned eleven, my mommy, auntie Nonna and uncle Henry went away. Mama said they went to paradise. They were probably with my daddy and brother then, but not my mother because only good people go there. Mama Coco went to look for them every day. She didn’t want to believe they were really dead; she was very angry with herself, but never once did she hit me or scream at me. She’s a good person after all. She would probably go to paradise if she died. I really don’t want her to die. When she wasn’t angry, she was very sad. She would cry at night when she thought I was asleep, but I always knew. I would crawl into bed with her almost every night maybe it was to comfort her or maybe because I was also sad. I don’t know but it doesn’t matter. We helped each other a lot. After a while it started to hurt less, mama started laughing again, we were starting to be okay again. I didn’t want to be okay because it meant that we were starting the fifth stage. For once I didn’t care what grief looked like. I didn’t want to believe that they were dead. They couldn’t be. Not when I finally had a family.

_**Death is the worst card.** _

Mama and I spent a whole year and a half alone together. It was scary for both of us. I almost forgot what mommy smelled like I almost lost her in my memories. Despite everything that had happened in the past, that was the worst year of my life. I was starting to become angry, just like my mother had been. I hated everything about that year, until one day, very early in the morning mama started shouting at the monster in the backyard. She shot at it with her gun and then there was silence. I couldn’t hear anything over the blood pounding in my ears. I was terrified just like every time the traps went off. I knew I was supposed to hide, to make sure I stay safe in case the monster came inside the house. I knew what I should do but I was completely frozen. I couldn’t move. It’s as if fear was just sitting on my chest, preventing me from doing anything at all. What felt like an hour later, I heard mama calling my name, telling me to come out and that everything as okay. I finally felt like I could move so I left my room slowly. However, when I made it to the top of the stairs, I froze again. Every single muscle in my body is pulled taught, rigid.

I could not believe my eyes, there, standing at the bottom of the stairs is the one person I had wished I could bring back from the dead. With the same gorgeous smile and wave that she always uses when she’s shy or excited. There is the woman who has been gone for eighteen months, three weeks and four days. There is my mommy, the warm and welcoming woman who sang to me while mama held me in her arms every time, I had a nightmare. The woman who always found time to cuddle with me in the morning no matter how busy the day ahead was. My mom, the one who would spend hours sitting in the closet with me when I was scared of getting hurt. She would tuck me in every night and kiss my forehead tenderly while telling me how lucky they were to have found the smartest, prettiest five-year-old girl ever.

There she was looking at me with tears in her eyes and suddenly my body lurched forward, stumbling down the creaky steps at a speed unknown to mankind. I launched myself at her and for the first time in eighteen months, surrounded by both of my mothers, with the distant hollers of aunt Nonna and uncle Henry, I felt like everything was perfect again.


End file.
